ProductMarketing.com

4 Things Amazon Didn’t Do To Make Amazon Prime A Success – A Random Jog

Amazon Prime may be the most ingenious and effective customer loyalty program in all of e-commerce, if not retail in general. It converts casual shoppers like Tinsley, who gorge on the gratification of having purchases reliably appear two days after they order, into Amazon addicts. Analysts describe Prime as one of the main factors driving Amazon’s stock price—up 296 percent in the last two years—and the main reason Amazon’s sales grew 30 percent during the recession while other retailers flailed.

via arandomjog.com

Lesson: premium price those things that you can do uniquely. Commodity price the rest.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Prospects for product management

According to Indeed.com, things are looking up for product management jobs.

Want to add some insight? Today's the last day to add your thoughts on product management in Pragmatic Marketing's annual product management survey at www.pragmaticmarketing.com/survey

Update: running some survey data now. Salaries seem to be up a tad from last year. $99,794 this year; $96,580 last year.

Why You Should Read Your Wife’s Facebook Page – Marketing with Meaning

One of the things I do to learn how our consumers are using digital and social media is to read my wife’s Facebook page. When I do this, I see the kinds of things that she and her friends are talking about–and it’s usually not brands or marketing. My wife and her friends talk about their children, plans for the weekend, hobbies, and reactions to what’s in the news. So if we want her to talk about our brand, then we need to do something that connects our brand in some meaningful way to what really interests her.

via marketingwithmeaning.com

Want to know what your customers are talking about? Check their Facebook pages. They ain't talking about your products and features. They are talking about things that interest them, using their voices. To get them to notice you, you need to engage with things that interest them (not you).

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

On pricing: Where does the value occur?

Product managers and others seem to love to discuss pricing, whether they have control of it or not. The question seems to be focused on the mechanics of different pricing systems--up-front, subscription, usage--when it should be focused on aligning the price with the product value.

It seems to me that the trick to successful product pricing is to get the money immediately after the customer has received the value. And that's probably the best time to upsell them too.

"You've enjoyed the product. Pay for it now. And what else can we sell you?"

You've had good food and good service at a new restaurant. The bill comes after you've eaten. And along the way, the server has upsold you on coffee, dessert, maybe an after-dinner drink. Good thing they didn't have you pay in advance.

I kinda wish that hotels were that way. The Residence Inn in Burlington, VT is so much nicer and friendlier than I expected it would be. I know it'd be weird but I'd be inclined to pay a little more than I was charged. And yet, name a hotel in New York City that you feel you've gotten your money's worth. ("I'm paying $425 a night for THIS! Heck, I'd rather sleep in the street.")

I would probably buy tickets for upcoming attractions as soon as I've seen the trailer, before the movie even came out, assuming the theater could sell me a ticket without derailing the movie experience. Many times, I watch the "coming attractions," and think, "I'd rather see that movie than the one I am here to see." (And sometimes I have even forgotten what movie I'm there to see. But dang! Those upcoming films look great.) What if I could send a text to pre-pay for that movie and be notified when the movie is in theaters--and better yet, get an offer to see the movie in some kind of exclusive setting rather than packed into a sold-out show.

Compare that with buying an article online. You hope it'll have the information you need for the report or article that you're writing but you won't know until you buy it. So you pay for the article and then don't find what you need. Dang! What a rip-off. And you tell your friends to avoid that service in future.

On the other hand, consider the try-and-buy option on Kindle. "Hmmm, I wonder if I'll like this book?" Not sure? Try it. Amazon downloads the first dozen pages for you to read. And the end of the sample, there's a "Buy Now" button.

So it seems to me that pricing products is difficult because we try to charge people too soon. Could it be because we fear that they won't value the product as much after they've seen it and used it?

Other than restaurants, can you think of products that charge you when you're most likely to appreciate the value?

 

Slide or documents, not slideuments

Company standards and many event organizers seem to require bad presentations. The trick: make a set of slides to punctuate your points; make a document to fully explain your points. Don't distribute both. 

Share this presentation with those around you. Maybe 2011 will be the year when we finally learn how to use PowerPoint and Keynote.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Why "Aligning" Sales and Marketing Never Works | BNET

That’s why it’s totally ridiculous to “align” Sales and Marketing as if the two group were co-equal.  The only real and practical alignment is for Marketing to step back, and respectfully ask the Sales team what they should be doing to help.  Submission, not alignment.

via bnet.com

Submit, you marketers!

Marketing is merely support for sales? Spoken like a truly clueless sales person. Join the stinkfest on BNet and add your own comments.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Pricing: your product doesn't have to be a commodity

I hate commodity products because I like premium pricing. But how can you charge a premium?

Generic cables are commodities--yet audio and video cables from Monster fetch a premium price. Why? They're made with better wires and they come with a lifetime warranty.

Alas, they have a terrible website. Just try to find information about the quality of their products and their warranties. Yet musicians who care about sound opt for the better product. More at http://www.monstercable.com/default.asp

Flour is a commodity--yet my father prefers to bake bread with Robin Hood flour, available only in Canada. It makes the best bread! The last time I drove to Toronto, he asked me to buy him some. I said, "You want me to smuggle 10 kilos of white powder across the border!!"

Gad, but their website!

Hood's baking professionals responded by providing high-quality convenience foods. During this time of intense economic competition, Robin Hood renewed its focus on quality, service and building trusted partnerships with customers and suppliers.

http://www.robinhood.ca/rh.timeline.asp?lid=1

If you have a me-too product, you'll have to offer me-too pricing. But why not charge a premium? What do you do that is special in your competitive marketplace? And who values that special thing?

Instead of building a product that is just the same as everyone else's, build one with capabilities or attributes that matter to a market segment. And charge 'em a premium.

The Truth About Branding: It's Useless | BNET

I think all the energy put into “branding” is simply a waste of mental energy.

via bnet.com

Me too.

Good article about brands and branding. (Guess what? Your brand results from how you build your products and how you treat your customers).

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Product Management Tip: How to Piss Off Customers

Are you a newbie product manager who isn’t sure how to piss off customers as fast as possible? Follow these simple steps and you can ruin your company’s brand, credibility, and sales pipeline in no time flat!

via voximate.com

New to the job? You need to understand the domain, market, product, problems. Lots to learn and you gotta work fast. These tips should point you in the right direction.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

More on trust

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.

-- Warren Buffett

 

In an earlier post I wrote about the importance of trust for premium pricing. But trust extends beyond confidence in the product; trust is even more important when considering working with a vendor.

"Body scans are never saved."

The new scanners used by TSA in major airports show a virtually naked view of the travelers. Ignoring the discomfort of having ANY strangers see us naked, the TSA insists the images are looked at by officers in a remote location and not by staff at the machine, and that the images are deleted immediately after the passenger is cleared through security. Yet pictures from these machines continue to pop up on the internet. We just don't trust the vendor of the machines or the TSA to do what they say.

"We won't spam you."

We give our names and email to a trusted vendor who abuses it when revenues are off. Over the protests of the "good" marketing people, the execs or sales people or "bad" marketing people insist that the downside of spamming customers is offset by the increase in revenue. "If we can make a million, who cares if we lose only 10% of our names?" But the vendor has lost more than that. Trust is gone.

Trust is earned

Why do we buy Toyota instead of GM? Design and quality over decades.

Why do we buy Apple instead of Microsoft? Design and quality over decades.

Why do we buy this instead of that? Design and quality over decades.

What can you do to increase trust with your customers? Isn't this really what marketing is all about?

ProductCamp Montreal this weekend 11/21

I'll be attending ProductCamp Montreal this weekend. Will you be there?

I'm planning to talk about the three roles of product management, using soem initial information from the Pragmatic Marketing annual product management survey.

What other topic strikes your fancy? Add a comment below so I can update my talk--or create a new one.

Pricing: It’s all about trust.

I led a pricing discussion last week at pCamp Amsterdam. Pricing is a topic that everyone has interest in, even if they don't have responsibility for pricing. There are research tools, notably conjoint analysis, that will help you set the right price but most product managers seem to follow try a logical rather than quantitative approach.

Apple products are often brought up in most pricing discussions. How do they charge a premium? Frankly, it's always difficult to use Apple as a reference point. They are huge; they spend money on research; they often seem to develop products specifically for Steve Jobs; they have a rabid fan base. Do you? Can you apply Apple's success to your own situation?

More important, how is it that Apple can charge premium prices, especially for new products?

The Apple iPad is a premium priced product that had hundreds of thousands of orders before anyone in the general public had actually seen it. How in the world…?

For one thing, Apple gave an incredible demo when the product was announced. Apple's keynotes are in fact 90-minute product commercials. You can see the products being used in real life. But even though they hadn't seen the iPad, an amazing number of people pre-ordered the product. Why?

I think Apple has created a loyalty from its customer base. Apple customers know the first product will be great and that subsequent products will be even better. We trust that they've designed another great product.

Can you say the same about your company? Your products? Will the first release be great? Or merely adequate?

As much as anything, pricing is aligned with trust. How much do you trust Apple or RIM or Microsoft or Oracle or SAP?

I just bought a new Jawbone wireless speaker. Sight-unseen. But I have trust. I bought Aliph's Jawbone ICON. Love it. So when they told me about the new speaker, I was inclined to trust them. And I didn't look elsewhere. I didn't compare "feeds and speeds" with other units. I went, "Yes I have this problem" and "I like Aliph products."

Who do you trust?

Not everyone feels this way, which is why it's important for you to research your customers' expectations rather than yours and mine. Research isn't just about product features; it's also about pricing, packaging, distribution channel, access to customer support, and so on.

Pricing is a complex issue. It involves comparison to competitive products and alternative products (I could buy the Aliph or the Jabra headet). It includes the cost of alternative uses of the money (I could buy a Bluetooth headset or a Netflix subscription). It involves trust (Do I believe it'll be worth the money? How does this compare to other products I've purchased in the past).

Start with these questions: competitive, alternatives, and trust. And then test the idea with your customers-to-be. You may be surprised with their answers.

Related posts:

• CrankyPM on Pricing
• Saeed Khan on Pricing

The generic job interview

CrankPM does it again with this hysterical series on job interviews.
Part 1:

Go to http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7674775 for more in the series.

Or post a comment on Cranky's blog.

ProductCamp Amsterdam 2010

The second ProductCamp Amsterdam will be held on Sunday, November 14th at the Backbase offices on the former Stork factory near Amsterdam Central Station.

via productcampamsterdam.org

I'm putting my final touches on my presentation and then headed to Amsterdam for productcamp. Over 100 people are registered. Hope to see you there.

How has your job changed over the last two years?

From our annual product management survey...

Q30. How has your job changed over the last two years?

Some favorites:

• a lot more corporate oversight/meddling...
• Dramatically… I came from a company that could not say "product management" to a young company that wants product management to succeed.
• Development process has moved to Agile model necessitating a change in how requirements are communicated. In general I believe that this is actually more in line with the Pragmatic model and a benefit.

Have you added yours?

Pragmatic Marketing's annual product management survey is open now!

 

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

General Atlantic » Building Products that Customers Love : Global Growth Investors

There needs to be one single person who owns the product process for each major product in the company. At startup companies, the CEO or another founder often plays this role, but this quickly becomes unscalable. Beyond startups, this should be a single, full-time product manager.

via generalatlantic.com

Cory A. Eaves, Managing Director, General Atlantic, has a nice writeup of important roles for an early stage company, defining product manager and product marketing manager roles. They're different skill sets and they're important to your success.

Nice kudo at the end for Pragmatic Marketing.

It's a good read. You might want to share this with others in your organizations.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

CEO Comments #1

From our annual product management survey...

Q28. If you could say one thing to your company president without fear of reprisal, it would be

Some favorites:

• Stop micro-mangling
• It's not strategy if it changes every week, and
• Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

Have you added yours?

Pragmatic Marketing's annual product management survey is open now!

 

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Be #1000 and win a mug

I've got lots of good data already in the annual product management survey and  need just a few more responses to make 1000. Amazing! Almost 1000 in less than a week. Sweet!

But I want a few more sooo...

If you're the 1000th person to respond to the survey, you'll win our most popular Pragmatic Marketing mug. A mug! Of your very own!!

 

BTW, One of my favorite comments so far:

"if you could say one thing to your company president without fear of reprisal, it would be..."

It's not strategy if it changes weekly.

Back to Basics - ProductChatter: From ProductCamp Newbie to Groupie @ProdCampSea

You are responsible for your own PCamp experience. The volunteers will make sure you know where you are going, have food and drink, and can answer questions, but you are responsible for your own success and learning at PCamp

via productchatter.blogspot.com

I think you'll enjoy this great post from a newbie on the productcamp experience.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Video Thursday: Visualizing data

David McCandless turns complex data sets (like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates) into beautiful, simple diagrams that tease out unseen patterns and connections. Good design, he suggests, is the best way to navigate information glut -- and it may just change the way we see the world.

If you're doing anything with data, you must explore this video plus those by Hans Rosling.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management